3/5/16

The Blue Pearl


          The Blue Pearl ~  Symmetrical Photograph #1



"I meditated constantly and always saw the sweet, 
radiant Blue Pearl in its infinite variations." 
Swami Muktananda from his autobiography The Play of Consciousness



The Blue Pearl

The fulfillment of yoga lies in establishing contact with the Blue Pearl, 
which is your innermost reality.  After the Blue Pearl stands steady 
for a while, it explodes.  Then it's light spreads throughout  
the universe and you can see it everywhere.  Within that 
light you see your own Guru . . .    you realize 
 that his [her, the Guru's] real abode has 
existed within you all the time.
Swami Muktananda
Darshan #77-78

Introduction : Inner Visions
In the Siddha Yoga literature, there is nothing more mysterious, and wondrous, than Swami Muktananda's account of his visionary meditation experiences of the Blue Pearl.  The Blue Pearl, or bindu, is a sublime paradox: it is no larger than the size of a sesame seed and yet "it contains millions and millions of universes" and it's light is brighter than millions of suns.  The Blue Pearl is the abode of God, and our hearts are the abode of the Blue Pearl.  The goal of yoga is to become merged--inseparably united with--the "formless" Light of Consciousness, the "supreme unmanifest Being," the "extremely secret" Blue Person of the Blue Pearl.  Swami Muktananda (Baba) wrote: "This is not something that can ever be expressed, in speech or writing, even at the end of time." 

Whenever I read Baba Muktananda's words I have a palpable experience of his grace, his sacred presence.  His words are truly alive with the divine energy of the Supreme Self, known as Chiti Shakti.  He writes with such powerful, direct, unaffected authority because he writes with the true conviction of his own personal experience, his accomplished state, his Union with the divine Self, the Blue Pearl, and his total identification with his beloved Guru, Bhagawan Nityananda.  Even though the mysteries he writes and speaks about cannot be grasped by the logical mind, his shakti-filled words somehow translate for me into a subtle, intuitive knowledge that I can feel in the depths of my being.  Baba shares his experience with such great love, enthusiasm and generosity that my heart feels at times like it will burst with overflowing gratitude when I read his words.    

*

This project is a visual meditation on Baba Muktananda's writings about his meditation experiences, his inner visions of the Blue Pearl.  He describes his visions, with remarkable detail, in the latter parts of his autobiography, The Play of Consciousness.  The entire book is an account of his spiritual journey, his "creative process" par excellence, from its very beginning to its completion.  His visions of the Blue Pearl mark the endpoint of the process, when he merges into the Light of Consciousness, the light of the Self, the light of the Blue Pearl.  

Baba wrote: "I meditated constantly and always saw the sweet, radiant Blue Pearl in its infinite variations."  This statement is of particular and striking interest to me, for I think of my series of "Blue Pearl" symmetrical photographs as variations on the same one theme.  Some of the photographs presented here are entirely new, while others are transformations--variations on images I have used in previous projects.  I have also borrowed images from this project for use in other more recent projects.  

*

Whatever you have in the outer world, 
in the cosmos which appears so vast, 
you have in the inner world too.
The outer and the inner
are one.
Swami Muktananda 


I want pause here to make an important distinction about the four-fold symmetrical "Blue Pearl" photographs:  I don't consider them mere illustrations of Baba Muktananda's meditation experiences.  Just as his words do much more than merely describe his visionary experiences, because his words are so charged with the grace of his experiences, similarly, the photographs presented here function for me as visual equivalents of my experience of Baba's writings.  In other words, the photographs function for me as True living symbols.     


True Living Symbols
The ancient yogic teachings say that it is maya, the ego, which creates the appearance or illusion of a dual, phenomenal reality that separates us from the Truth of our own divine Self.  The symbol could be defined as a sacred image which visualizes, or gives visual form to, the Unity or Oneness of Being.  It conjoins (re-unites) outer-world forms with their corresponding inner-world Imaginal-essential archetypes.  The True symbol simultaneously contains and radiates a palpable, potentially life-transforming sacred energy, what Baba calls Chiti Shakti, and which is also, often referred to as "grace."  

After Baba achieved the fulfillment of his spiritual journey and consciously merged with the Light of Consciousness, he said he became "completely convinced that there is no such entity as the phenomenal world, that indeed there never was such an entity.  What we call the universe is nothing other than the conscious play of Chiti Shakti."   


The Center-Point
At the very center of each symmetrical photograph there is a bindu, an invisible point where the four mirroring images meet and become conjoined.  In their state of four-fold unity the images become transformed into a new, revelatory visual whole, a symbolic image.  The center-point, which corresponds to the Blue Pearl, is a subtle, ineffable space from which the image unfolds outwardly into manifestation from the interior Imaginal World. 


The Contemplator and the Symbol
The mystery of the Blue Pearl--its origin, its meaning, its workings--is beyond comprehension. However, just as a True symbol is the product of the merging of two corresponding parts of an outward and inward dual reality, similarly, when a contemplator merges into the living grace-filled mystery of a symbol, a silent recognition does occur, a "hidden treasure" is unveiled, and sacred knowledge is transmitted, received, absorbed.  Though the meaning of a contemplative experience of a symbol may be unknown, that is to say, unsayable--because sacred knowledge transcends the mind and the intellect--the contemplator becomes transformed by the experience: one's heart opens, a subtle inner joy is awakened, the soul becomes intoxicated . . . 


              *                *                


Notes: Most of the text excerpts I have used in this project are from Baba Muktananda's The Play of Consciousness; I have also included a few passages from one of Baba's talks published in the #77-78 issue of Darshan magazine, a Siddha Yoga publication.  ~  Though I consider this project complete in itself, I am also aware of how it serves as a sequel to my last project, The Center of Being and in particular the project's Epilogue which was an inspiration for the Blue Pearl project.  Thus I have placed The Blue Pearl project after the Epilogue as an Addendum.  ~  This project of course must also be included in the Photography and Yoga project, and I have placed it there as an Addendum.  ~  Finally, a reminder: you may click on the images, once, twice, to get a more close-up, detailed, inside view.  ~  Thank you for visiting The Blue Pearl project.   SF


                                _____________________________________________________________________


        The Blue Pearl 
        Photographs & Texts

              The Blue Person that I had seen is also known as the sphere of unmanifest light.  
              Yogis see Him who contains the entire world within Himself, within the   
               Blue Pearl in meditation.  ~ That supreme unmanifest Being
                is extremely secret to seekers.   He is the goal of 
              the Siddha path.  
            This is not something that can ever be expressed 
              in speech or writing, even at the end of time.  
              It is only through His grace that 
              divine realization 
                   will come.      
               Swami Muktananda 
                     from his autobiography 
                 The Play of Consciousness



The Blue Pearl the size of a sesame seed  ~ Symmetrical Photograph #2


Whatever you have in the outer world, in the cosmos which appears so vast, you have in the inner world too.  The inner and the outer are one. . .  As the eyes gaze at the Blue Pearl they become cleansed; the ocular centers become purified.  As a result of that you can pick up visual signals which you cannot pick up with normal vision; you can see even without light.  The light in the eyes is much brighter than the light outside.  Swami Muktananda, Darshan #77-78



The Blue Pearl ~  Symmetrical Photograph #3




"The Blue Pearl Light of A Million Suns" ~  Symmetrical Photograph #4


The yoga texts say that the Blue Pearl is the heart seed.  Just as a seed sprouts, explodes, and grows into a huge tree, likewise this Blue Pearl contains the entire cosmos within itself.  The yoga texts urge us to see all this through meditation.  This is the fruit of the inner yoga, activated through the awakening of the Shakti.  Swami Muktananda, from a talk  published in Darshan #77-78





The Blue Pearl ~ Symmetrical Photograph #5


As you meditate more and more, you pass into the supra causal body which is blue . . . In that body you experience the transcendental state of consciousness.  This body [which we call the Blue Pearl] is extremely dynamic . . .  sparkling and scintillating in the sahasrara,* the divine spiritual center in the [crown of the head].  This is the Self or soul.  Swami Muktananda, Darshan #77-78




The Blue Pearl ~ Symmetrical Photograph #6
     

A passage from the Pratyabhijna-hirdayam [sutra 3] describes the viewpoint of Shiva the supreme Self . . . [which says] that for Lord Parashiva. . .  there is no such thing as the universe.  He is true, eternal, attributeless, formless, all-pervasive, and perfect.  He sees the whole universe, from Shiva to the earth--the moving and the unmoving, the manifest and the unmanifest--as supremely blissful Light, undifferentiated from Himself.  There is nothing other than He; distinctions of seer and seen, subject and object, individual and universal, and matter and consciousness are not real.  It is the vibrations of the Lord Parashiva alone that produce the countless different forms of the universe.  I see that the universe is the body of the Lord and that Paramashiva Himself appears as the universe within His own being.   Swami Muktananda The Play of Consciousness




The Blue Pearl ~ Symmetrical Photograph #7


Wherever my mind happens to turn, I see the world in the midst of this shining mass of Light. Whenever I see anyone, I first see the blue light and then the person.  Whenever I see anything,  I see first the beautiful, subtle rays of Consciousness and then the thing itself.   The way I see things, whether large or small, demonstrates the truth of the versus of Tukaram: "My eyes have been bathed with the lotion of the blue light, and I have been granted divine vision."  Swami Muktananda The Play of Consciousness




The Blue Pearl ~ Symmetrical Photograph #8


My meditation became focused on the blue light. . .   I began to experience that I was entering into the center of the sahasrara* and the Blue Pearl . . . As I passed inside the Blue Pearl, I once again saw the universe spreading out in all directions.  I looked around everywhere and saw in all men and women--young and old, high and low, in each and every one--the same Blue Pearl that I had seen in myself.  I saw that this was the inner Self within everyone's sahasrara . . .  Swami Muktananda The Play of Consciousness





The Blue Pearl ~ Symmetrical Photograph #9


As I gazed at the tiny Blue Pearl, I saw it expand, spreading its radiance in all directions, so that the whole sky and earth were illuminated by it.  It was now no longer a Pearl, but had become shining, blazing, infinite Light--the Light that the writers of the scriptures and those who have realized the Truth have called the divine Light of Chiti.  The Light pervaded everywhere in the form of the universe.  I saw the earth being born and expanding from the Light of Consciousness, just as one can see smoke rising from a fire.  I could actually see the world within this conscious Light and the Light within the world, like threads in a piece of cloth and cloth in the threads.  Swami Muktananda ~ The Play of Consciousness



                The Blue Pearl Egg  ~ Symmetrical Photograph  #10 
                     (click on the image to enlarge)   

                The wonderfully radiant Blue Pearl, with its countless
                different rays shining from within, came closer and
                closer to me and began to grow.  It assumed the
                shape of an egg and continued to grow into
                a human being.  I could see it growing
                with my own eyes and was lost in
                utmost amazement.
                         Swami Muktananda The Play of Consciousness 




The Angel of the Blue Pearl ~ Symmetrical Photograph #11              


Remember that there is a divine Person residing in the sahasrar* of everyone, and that divine Person is supremely effulgent.  I am saying this on the authority of my own personal experience.  That Person is supremely divine.  Sometimes, that being shines as a Blue Pearl in meditation and sometime He reveals himself as a human being. . .  After that vision you don't have to ponder the Vedantic truth, "I am Brahman."  The truth reveals its meaning to you by itself.  

The supreme truth dwells within everyone.  Tukaram Maharaj said truly (and I turn his words over in my mind again and again), "The Lord of the universe dwells within a house which is as tiny as a sesame seed."  This is the highest doctrine, this is the highest philosophy.  The divine trinity, Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesha--in fact numerable gods and goddesses appears within the Blue Pearl and disappear.  Tukaram says that though the Pearl appears to be so tiny it contains all the three worlds in it.  Therefore, I keep asking you time and again to meditate on your own Self, and get a direct experience of Rama, the Lord, who dwells within you, as you.  You must first experience the Lord within you.  Don't worry about the Lord outside.  The Lord who is supposed to dwell outside has manifested Himself in your heart.  Volume Five, Satsang with Baba : Questions and answers with Swami Muktananda




The Blue Pearl ~ Symmetrical Photograph #12


Every day my conviction grew stronger:  The Blue Person "is truly my inner Self, whose light is spread throughout the entire universe."  . . . The Blue One was my own Self, the One who lives within all, pervades the entire universe, and set it in motion, who is One without a second, nondual, and undifferentiated, and yet who is always at play, becoming many from one and one from many.  He is Shri Krishna, the eternal blue of Consciousness, the beloved life-breath . . . the Self.  Swami Muktananda ~ The Play of Consciousness




The Blue Pearl ~ Symmetrical Photograph #13


I came to see that just as a painter might paint many pictures on one canvas with just one color, one brush, and one concept, in the same way, there is One in this universe, despite all the different forms and colors that may be seen.   I came to see, in other words, that in all differences there is only one identity.  Swami Muktananda The Play of Consciousness

*

How beautiful it was! . . .  There was now just a mass of shining radiant light with no name and no form.  Then all the rays bursting forth from the blue light contracted and returned into the Blue Pearl.  The Blue Pearl was once again the size of a tiny seed.  Swami Muktananda The Play of Consciousness




The Blue Pearl ~ Symmetrical Photograph #14


Even now, when I meditate, as soon as I am absorbed in meditation, I see the mass of the blue rays of the Light of Consciousness and, within that, the Blue Pearl. . . . Now I really know that my Self pervades everywhere as the universe.  I am completely convinced that there is no such entity as the phenomenal world, that indeed there never was such an entity.  What we call the universe is nothing other than the conscious play of Chiti Shakti.  Swami Muktananda The Play of Consciousness




The Blue Pearl ~ Symmetrical Photograph #15 


God has granted me the vision by which I see everything with a slightly bluish tinge.  In India there is a plant that grows wild in the field, and it produces small, light blue flowers.  that is the color of my eyes.  In the scriptures this is called the lotion of Consciousness.  Tukaram Maharaj said that when this lotion of Consciousness was applied to his eyes, he could really see.  First his vision was limited, then it expanded.  When it expanded he could not see the world as world any longer.  He could not see people as sinners or as wicked; he could see only God's light everywhere, and everyone appeared to him to be the light of God.  Baba Muktananda, as quoted by Swami Shantananda in his book The Splendor of Recognition, end of chapter on Sutra 19.   



"The Blue Person of the Blue Pearl"   The Blue Pearl  #16 



 
 "The Sphere of Unmanifest Light"  The Blue Pearl #17                        







                               *                    *                    *   


                   ~  Epilogue ~    


                 The Blue Pearl ~ Symmetrical Photograph ~ Epilogue #18 
                 (click on the image to enlarge)   

           The words of Gurumayi:

                Meditate on the Guru in the form of the Blue Pearl.  It sits in the center of  
                 a vibrating triangle in the thousand-petaled lotus of the sahasrara*.  
                You do not necessarily see only one Blue Pearl at a time; 
                sometimes you see thousands and thousands 
                of blue dots. The vision of the Blue Pearl 
                is very intoxicating.  In fact, it has 
                the ability to remove the deepest 
                sorrows in your heart. . . 
                You can almost feel 
                 what God feels.   
                        Gurumayi Chivilasananda  
                      Darshan magazine, #41- 42

                       _____________________
                       ______________

                       
        
                        
                  *  

                  This project was completed and posted   
                   on my Welcome Page 
                  March 14, 2016
                  Latest Revision : February 2023

*Note:  definition:  Sahasrara  the "Crown chakra" 
The seat of the individual soul, hamsah, is the heart chakra.  The sahasrara, located in the crown of the head, is the seat of the Supreme Self.  It is here that we realize the oneness of the individual soul and the Supreme Soul.  This Supreme Hamsah is the all-powerful Great Light that devours the universe.  It is also the Guru Principle.  ~  In the sahasrara there is a triangle; in the very center of this triangle is the Blue Pearl.  This scintillating blue dot is . . .  the state of gathered-up power of Consciousness that is about to create the universe.  ~  The Blue Pearl "sprouts" into three pearls, or bindus, and the lines connecting them form the a-ka-tha triangle.  This triangle, composed of all the letters of the alphabet, is the source of all sound vibration; then these sounds or letters come down in sequence through the chakras.  The entire universe of vibrating sound is evolved from the Blue Pearl.    Swami Kripananda, a Siddha Yoga teacher, from her book: The Sacred Power  

                 
Related Links & Projects:
Symbol   
Blue Angels A Photography Project about Death, Angels and the Blue Pearl  ~ Feb. 2023 

Welcome Page  to The Departing Landscape website which includes the complete hyperlinked listing of my online photography projects dating back to the 1960's, my resume, contact information, and more.





       


                           













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3/3/16

Brief Bio


A Brief Bio : Steven D Foster


Steven D. Foster
3906 Chatham Lane
Canandaigua, NY 14424

Brief  Bio

Steven D. Foster has exhibited his photography in major museums and galleries nationally for over forty years, including a retrospective exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago.  Please visit his two photography websites:  THE DEPARTING LANDSCAPE which includes projects created between the mind-1960’s and 2011, and THE SACRED ART PHOTOGRAPHY PROJECTS which is dedicated to the exploration of the sacred in Foster’s more recent work, from 2011 to the present.


At the age of ten Foster had an  epiphany in which he intuitively recognized that his life’s work would be dedicated to photography.  He went on to study photography as a fine art at the Rochester Institute of Technology, the Institute of Design, IIT, Chicago, and the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.  He was able to study with some the great master teachers and photographers in the history of photography including: Minor White, Beaumont Newhall, Van Deren Coke, Ray Metzker, Aaron Siskind, Wynn Bullock and Fredrick Sommer.  While studying at RIT Foster studied two years with Nathan Lyons in his year long home workshops.  Lyons, who at the time was Director of Exhibitions at George Eastman House, when on to be the founder of the Visual Studies Workshop.
Foster taught photography as a fine art at Georgia State University-Atlanta (1972-75) and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (1975-2007), where he created both the undergraduate and graduate sub-majors in photography.  Though now retired from teaching, as of 2016 Foster continues to be actively engaged in his own creative process as a picture maker, which his two photography websites make quite clear.
After living and teaching photography in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for 33 years Foster and his wife Gloria moved to Canandaigua, NY in 2008.  He was briefly represented by the Spectrum Gallery in Rochester, NY, and presented a  Solo Exhibition of his work at the gallery in 2012.  While living in Milwaukee for 33 years, Foster was represented by the Michael H Lord Gallery in Milwaukee and the Carol Ehlers Gallery in Chicago.  His work was exhibited regularly at these galleries in two-year intervals.  Visit Foster’s  Resume

Foster has created three major bodies of work inspired by the music and writings of Morton Feldman: The Departing Landscape Project  a poetic contemplation on Man’s alienation from Nature, and the decay of the natural world.  The other two projects are entitled the Triadic Memories Project 2003-07 which consists of eight related bodies of work, and The Garage Series, 1999-2001.

In 2011 the Fosters learned that the Finger Lakes area was being threatened by the an aggressive, very toxic method of horizontal natural gas drilling known as hydrofraking.  In an attempt to inform others about hydrofracking and to help protect the land he had come to love in NY State, Foster and his wife Gloria became very active in the NY state anti-fracking movement; and one of his contributions to the movement included the creation of a website http://notohydrofracking.blogspot.com/  Foster considered the website a relevant addition to his larger project entitled The Departing Landscape, and as a result of his work with the anti-hydrofracking movement in New York he created a series of related photography projects The Hydrofracking Suite.
Also in 2011 Foster traveled to Turkey with his wife where he encountered for the first time the sacred art traditions of Islam.  Foster’s experiences in Turkey generated an outpouring of related creative photography projects over the following two years which is collected in the project titled “An Imaginary Book”.  This project initiated an ongoing and continuing series of projects which explore the idea of sacred art in contemporary art practice.  “An Imaginary Book” and all the sacred art projects that followed can be seen in his website: THE SACRED ART PHOTOGRAPHY PROJECTS

Since the late 1960’s Foster has been interested in the spiritual in art: he read Kandinsky’s well known book and considered photographers Alfred Stieglitz and Minor White two of his early mentors.  He read several books by Coomaraswamy, Mercia Eliade and Joseph Campbell before entering graduate school (1969-72) where, to fulfill his MFA written requirement he prepared a 110 page thesis research paper on the relationship of Carl Jung’s ideas about depth psychology to his creative process in photography focusing on Jung’s studies on medieval alchemy and synchronicity .  

Since 1987 Foster has been practicing Siddha Yoga Meditation and his study of the yogic scriptures have been ongoing.  He thinks of his creative process in photographic picture-making as a form of meditation in action.